...and that's why people in New York don't smile.

As of last Wednesday, I’m living in the one place on Earth I’d never thought I’d be living: 750’s BC Mesopotamia.

Oh wait. No. Just New York City.

I’ve never been one of those people who is in love with New York. While some young people (namely  the geriatric teenagers on “Glee”) have romantic visions of New York, of not getting mugged before their certain stardom on Broadway, I can’t think of one disaster film/alien film/whatever film featuring the complete and total destruction of New York City that did not cause me to cheer. On what we could consider a good day for my relationship with New York City, I simply don’t think about New York City.

But there’s a particular program I wanted to do that just happens to be in New York, so…here I am. Writing this from my room in Manhattan. During the interview process the program people asked me some questions about my thoughts on New York and my motivation for applying to a program in New York in particular, wanting to ensure I hadn’t applied to this program simply for an easy/safe way to move to NEW YOOOOOOORK. I didn’t know how to properly convey to them how deeply this was not going to be a problem.

But now that I’m here I have two options: 1) I can make damn well sure that everyone in New York knows I hate them simply for being New Yorkers, or 2) I can try to counter some of the things I dislike about New York to make the city better for me and (hopefully) slightly, and in perhaps a completely unnoticeable way, better for others.

Armed with the naivety of the very characters of “Glee” who piss me off (for many reasons, but mostly for their complete lack of student-teacher boundaries), I decided I was going to smile at people for no reason. With the expertise of 12 hours in New York, I decided the best way to fix New York was to march to the bus with a hideous smile plastered on my face. “HELLO,” my face said, “I’VE HAD A STROKE!”

And so, looking slightly happy and slightly constipated, I got onto a bus. As it trundled down the road to the train station, I stared at the window and thought to myself, “There are people everywhere. Everywhere. So many people. Oh my God there are too many people. Why are there so many people? New York is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever.” But I continued to smile.

The bus stopped not too far from one of New York’s seemingly ubiquitous Payless Shoes stores (New Yorkers must have more feet than real people?), and a man folding a table was right outside the window. Judging from the intense look in his eyes, this was no ordinary table. This was the table the prophecy had foretold. This was the table that has been promised to—OH MY GOD NOW HE’S LOOKING AT ME.

Perhaps encouraged by the near-permanent forced smile on my face, the man retained eye contact. I say eye contact because in English we don’t have a word for an ocular Star Wars tractor beam. No, I must resist. Or at the very least, I must stop smiling as that appears to be the tractor beam’s energy source. The man kept staring. Staring to the point where people around me noticed and commented. The man kept staring, and I couldn’t decide between poetically putting my hand up to the glass as if to simultaneously and fruitlessly reach out to him and make a comment about the impossibility of ever being together, or simply disintegrating on the spot.

I looked away, hoping that would end the staring. Curiosity got the better of me, so I turned my head slightly to see out of the corner of my eye. Let’s see if he’s still—ohp, he’s still there. Staring at me. Oh God. What do I do. He’s still staring WHY IS THE BUS STILL STOPPED?? Jesus…has time stopped? Is that what’s happened? Is this what I get for smiling at people in New York?

The worst part of the staring is that I couldn’t tell if the guy was angry about my smile, encouraged by my smile, shocked by my smile, or was just staring at me because something was hanging out of my nose. All I know is that I smiled at a stranger in New York and in return received a stare that combined the essences of the songs “Some Enchanted Evening” and “I’ma cut you.”

 (It’s actually a thing.)

…and that’s why people in New York don’t smile.

.

Of course I spend the weekend in Paris and the only comment I have is about its bathrooms.

So this one time I fled to Paris on a whim. After a ridiculously long sit in Sacre Coeur contemplating what a complete and utter jackass I am, I decided that I was being called to something. Not to a vocation but to the toilets. I went on a quest that took me through narrow alleyways, stands of men desperate to sell me crepes, and European Urine Pockets. (Just as Chicago has random pockets of fart smell called, quite shockingly, Fart Pockets, Europe has random areas that smell of pee even when no urine is visibly presence)

Hang on, we interrupt this blog post to inform you that the two bespectacled, scrawny and massively nerdy folks, one female the other presumably male, at the table next to me at Café O’Conway at Gare du Nord Paris keep discussing what great quantities of weed they’re going to smoke in Amsterdam. Have fun with that, guys.

Once talk of drugs died down an awkward silence fell over their table. The guy pushed his glasses up and puffed his chest out like he was one of those birds hopping around trying to attract a mate. His voice dropped about five octaves and his accent even shifted to sound less Midwestern and more Californian: “Dude, at my college we have soooooo many pigeons.”

For a brief, unguarded moment the girl gave him a stare that seemed to suggest she was appalled at how boring this guy was, and then quickly looked away as she uncomfortably folded and unfolded the empty sugar packets that were on their table. Another awkward silence. You could practically hear the thoughts in the guy’s head: “How can I save this?” And clearly the best answer his brain could come up with was to say to the girl, “So we used to play ‘Kick the Pigeon.’”

Had we been in a slapstick film this would have been the moment for the girl to do a spit-take. But this being real life she just managed to somehow kind of choke on the last remaining drops of her Diet Coke. After the coughing died down she spluttered out a “WHAT?!”

Again, the guy tried to save it: “Um…um…yeah, it was a bloodbath! [*uncomfortable forced laugh*]” At this the girl started looking around desperately, presumably to find the hidden cameras, as she shouted, “WHAT? THERE WAS BLOOD???” The boy turned bright red, muttering, “Well, no, now that I think of it there was no blood…”

Anyway. Sacre Coeur. France. Toilets. I needed one. Soooo: after a long quest through Montmartre in which I suspect I may have at one point crossed into Belgium, I finally found a set of bathrooms that (to my paranoid, San Adreas Fault-warped eyes) looked rather precariously perched on top of this hill. In fact, even the sidewalk in the area was tilted and seemed to have fallen about halfway down the hill. Though nature kept calling and leaving increasingly frustrated voicemails, I couldn’t help but hesitate after imagining the entire bathroom sliding down the mountain about as gracefully as little me would slide down our hardwood stairs in a sleeping bag. Sliding down the stairs always ended in a few bruises on my ass, whereas riding the bathroom like a flume ride down this mountain would prolly end with my lifeless body in a mass grave somewhere in France because at the time my parents had no idea I was even in France. So do I risk riding the bathroom? Do I go big or go home (with wet pants)?

Pee gets the best of me and I end up entering this bathroom only to find a sort of old-fashioned courtyard. It’s tiled and wooden and for some reason it makes me think of Main Street at Disneyland, that same sort of faux old timey charm, though this being Paris the old timey charm was more likely vrai than faux. In the center of this courtyard—nay, piazza—was an attendant safely encased in what looked like an old-fashioned movie theater ticket window.

In general I find the European concept of someone being employed to facilitate your bowel movement experience a challenging one. But I find the bathroom attendants hidden away behind glass like they work in a high security bank instead of a place where people shit, write on walls, and occasionally have sex, to be a step beyond weird. If I had to rob something I don’t think the toilets at Sacre Coeur would be the first large haul target to come to mind. Then again, maybe I just haven’t given this enough thought.

I stood staring at this woman and her movie ticket window forcefield (“Hi, I’d like one ticket to the 2:00 pm showing of ‘Sam Urinates Today: Part II’”), and I tried to look for a sign indicating how much the Europeans would make me pay this time. Would I be able to hear her response or was this the sort of ticket window glass that as the bane of my existence, the type where the other person shouts (or mimes shouting) and all you hear is a faint buzzing?

Well, my questions were answered when I heard frantic knocking. Startled, I looked up to find the attendant knocking on the window with a panicked look on her face. Thinking my time had come to help someone in distress, I rushed up to the window to save this woman from whatever evil had befallen her. Heart attack? I’ve seen enough “House” to administer CPR. Invisible alien murderer strangling her? I’ve seen a similar amount of “Doctor Who.”

At this point the lady stopped her morse code of distress, pointed at a stall, and commanded me in French to go to it. Again, I was slightly confused so I hesitated. She tapped again, looking like she cannot BELIEVE how much time I’m wasting, and again barked at me in Paris talk to go to that stall. And in case I didn’t get the point, she had a terrified look in her eyes as she punctuated her command with an “ALLEZ-Y!” that seemed to herald the end of the world should I not make my way to that stall immediately.

I knew at this point I should just get my ass to the damn stall, but again I paused. I turned around and slowly passed a wary hand through the empty air to see if there were until now unseen hordes waiting behind me. No, this bathroom was so empty that if the movie ticket lady weren’t tapping the window and shouting “ALLEZ-Y” like it’s her job (maybe it is?), then I’m sure you could have heard crickets chirping, although in France I bet crickets play mournful accordion tunes of loves lost instead.

So I’m completely alone in this enormous bathroom up a mountain in Paris. And yet someone has decided I need to get my happy ass into a stall RIGHT NOW, hurrying like Indiana Jones trying to escape the Temple. Clearly the only appropriate response to this would have been, “Lady, how badly do you think I need to go pee?”

Writing is against my birthright.

So I’m still having trouble comprehending this whole issue of pens in UK schools. From my limited experience (observations in six schools—still prolly more classroom experience than Michael Gove), I’ve concluded that British children must be allergic to pens. At the start of every class period inevitably a small riot breaks out as the kids loudly inform Miss that they don’t have a pen or demand that Sir lend them one from the supply that he finds himself forced to bring with him.

I find it genuinely fascinating that it doesn’t occur to these children to bring their own goddamn pens to each lesson, and I often like to speculate on the thought process behind that one. I imagine that these children think that they are going to simply do interpretive dance all day at school and are then on a daily basis deeply shocked and offended to find that going to school usually involves writing at least a couple things down in your notebook—“Wait, we’re going to have to write things down? IN SCHOOL???”

I really just don’t get it. In my school people rarely forgot pens. And if you did you would very quickly have a quiet word with your neighbor to ask, completely humiliated and one step away from performing public self-flagellation, whether you could borrow a pen. And if that neighbor was me, you would then have to sign a contract. Because I was that desperate to not have any friends.

The kids’ aversion to pens is almost as confusing to me as British teachers’ obsession with having the kids underline things with rulers as opposed to simply letting the children do the terrifyingly bold and dangerous task of freehanding lines underneath entire words (dare I even imagine such a world?!), which seems like such a frustratingly massive waste of time that it might even earn itself its own blog post.

Remember thou art in England

Last night I partied chez the evangelicals. And when I say “partied” I really mean prayed. And when I say “prayed” I actually mean I just stood there, perhaps in a salute to my stern Presbyterian roots, with my lips sealed and my hands firmly stuck in my pockets.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun. Oh God no, I had the time of my lameass life. What I enjoyed so much is that it was completely unexpected. I mean, when I imagine the Church of England—even “evangelical” C of E—I imagine people in suits, women’s hats that seem to do their own interpretive dances, and a bunch of stiff people with posh accents saying, “Hallo.” You know, Queen Victoria, cricket, tuna and baked potatoes, and all that.

What I found at St Aldate’s, however, was a rock band, TV screens, and a crowd of people with their hands in the air. Old people were rockin out all over the places, and this one enormous gentleman who looked like Jeremy Clarkson only put his arms down once when he was very suddenly called by the Holy Spirit to rush off to the bathroom. To be honest, it was like being back at a miniature version of Willow Creek, my preferred megachurch back in the US. They had the same free-form prayers where every other word was “just” (“We’re just gonna take it down just a notch here and just pray, to just let Jesus know that we’re just thrilled that He could just be here tonight and just lead us to just know Him. Yeah, really just to know just how great He is.”), the live muzak during prayer intervals, the ubiquitous Australian teaching pastor who always seems on the verge of tears when he teaches, and the insanely hot member of the worship band—there’s always one.

The whole experience made me think of Roman triumphs, where the victorious general followed by a slave who has the job of being the dickhead who holds a wreath over the general’s head and reminds him, “Remember thou art mortal.” I just kept thinking that I need a dickhead like that to remind me, “Remember thou art in England.” Because I honestly didn’t believe it. Until last night it did not occur to me that actual, honest-to-goodness English people prayed like this. No, I kept telling myself, I am back in America. This is how Americans pray, not English people. The upside of all this is that I now know where to go when I’m feeling homesick.

Other than my initial shock at finding out that there are some English people (and a fair few!) who do enjoy rocking out while they pray, the service wasn’t all that different or weird from what I’ve seen before. Well, there was a sort of weird half an hour where I was convinced the guy giving the sermon had an Amish accent. I kept wracking my brain trying to figure out just how the hell an Amish guy ended up here and praying this way. Like, my family’s religious journey has been a weird one, but I think shaving off your chin beard and swapping your horse and buggy for a car kind of trumps everything…and then I realized that the guy was probably just from one of those Germanic or Scandinavian countries. But it was a lot more magical when I thought he was Amish.

Another thing that I love about this church, and about all evangelical churches really, is that they are constantly trying to pray for you. I mean, try getting evangelicals to NOT pray for you—Jesus Christ, there’s a miracle waiting to happen. All other churches you have to specifically ask for people to pray for you, which can often be really intimidating, but with evangelicals you have to beat them off with a stick if you don’t want them praying/preying on you. Evangelicals are kind of like benevolent zombies, lurching forward with their praying arms outstretched, groaning “Can we just pray for you?” instead of “BRAAAAAAAIIIINSSSS.”

Ah, it’s just so fabulous though. Knowing there’s a mini megachurch in my town, suddenly I feel a lot more enthusiastic about this year.

you knew this post was coming.

I’ve actually lost a bit of weight here—true, I still look like a manatee with glasses, but it has gotten to the point where pairs of once-tight pants (trousers, not underpants, if any Brits are reading this) have started slipping down, causing me to either rely on the one belt I own or frantically hike up the waistband every five steps like I’m doing a folk dance. Part of me is thrilled about the possibility of at some point no longer being the Fat American, but then the practical part of me is sort of panicked about how I will be able to afford new pants should this trend continue. I’m terrified that I’m going to be on my school placement and I’ll be known as that strange teacher who holds up her pants with hemp ropes like a sack of potatoes. “Do you know Sam?” “Ah yes, she’s that well-educated hobo, right?”

The problem is that British food is absolutely vile. Look, I love this country, I so very badly want to be able to smugly tell my friends back home that even the food here is fantastic, but unfortunately here in England I’m frequently confronted by plates of food that I could not, even in my vague liberal artsish way of fudging the boundaries of my knowledge, pretend to be able to identify.

Occasionally I CAN identify what I’m eating, and that’s even worse. For example, steak and kidney pie. WHY? And I don’t mean why in the curious, academic sense. I mean it in the aching religious sense, the crisis of faith sense, where you ask God from the very depths of your soul how an omnibenevolent being could possibly treat his creation so terribly in allowing man to invent steak and kidney pie. It really is The Problem of Evil. I honestly believe that there should be special death camps set aside for people who serve other people steak and kidney pies. And, being in theory a candidate for Hitler’s own death camps, I think I’m allowed to say things like that.

Sometimes the food isn’t bad, it’s just put into weird combinations. For example, I keep seeing restaurants that serve baked potatoes with tuna (instead of sour cream, chives, bacon and cheese—like a NORMAL baked potato). WHY WOULD YOU PUT TUNA IN A BAKED POTATO? What on God’s green earth could have possibly possessed you when you dreamt up that unholy union? I mean, Jesus Christ, no wonder you lost the Empire.

Then there’s the whole issue of baked beans. Apparently people here eat baked beans with their bacon and eggs in the morning. I personally don’t see what business beans have coming to breakfast. I want to look the beans right in the eye and ask, “Who the fuck invited you?”

It’s not all bad though. The sweets have been fantastic. Last week I was inducted into the world of biscuits, and I have now heard the Gospel of Trifle. I find myself running home from class each day, literally sprinting through the park and bowling over old women trudging along with their shopping who dare stand between me and cake, just so I can make it back in time for cake. (How twee and British is it that my college serves us cake every afternoon? But that’s something that deserves its own blog post.)

And also in fairness the non-British food I’ve had here has been pretty fantastic. I’m eating shawarma like I’m back in Israel, and I have so many kebab shop options near my apartment that I’ve decided that from now on I will not eat at kebab shops that cut the meat off with an electric turkey carver. No, I will insist my shawarma be cut off with one of those bigass knives that look like samurai swords. Come to think of it, I think I’ll insist on using a samurai sword for all knife functions. How fantastic would it be to spread strawberry jelly on toast with a knife so large you’d have to clear everyone out of the way beforehand? (“OH MY GOD, GET OUT OF THE WAY—SAM’S SPREADING MARGARINE!” “OH GOD NO, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” “AAAA!”) I think it’d lend a nice air of drama that is so sadly lacking at meals nowadays.

I get a little mean about English teeth. But I do honestly love the English.

The other day I was sitting in a group of English people in a pub. I’m beginning to find that English people don’t tend to sit anywhere else—no one here ever suggests just sitting around in the lounge, or sitting in a café all French-like, or sitting in a movie theater, or sitting in a park, or sitting on a boat, or any of the other millions of places you could possibly sit. No, they always want to sit in a dark room that smells faintly of piss and looks like a butch gay pirate’s boudoir, and they want to clutch glasses the size of oil barrels filled with warm beer. And no matter how empty the pub is, it’s always impossible to hear anything anyone else is saying. Even if you are literally the only person in the bar, you still have to shout to hear your own thoughts as I’m pretty sure pubs blast ambient soundtrack CDs of drunk British people shouting about something the French did 200 years ago.

But enough about pubs. I came here to be mean about something in particular, and today I’m going to be mean about English teeth. So anyway, we’re in the pub and somehow the conversation turns to Miranda Hart. I get really excited as, for once, this is someone I think I’ve heard of. So I pipe up, “She’s the one on that lying show hosted by Rob Brydon, right? She's very funny, I think... She’s the one with the bad teeth?”

In a second I knew I had said something very, very wrong, as the British fell silent. Well, when I say silent I mean that those around me stopped talking but the other pub patrons were still pissed off and shouting about something. Everyone kept giving each other a confused look, and finally someone said, “Well, she’s on ‘Would I Lie to You?’ but she doesn’t have bad teeth…”

At that point I shut up about it because I realized that clearly some kind of boundary had been crossed. But being the member of academia that I am, I did my research.


Look, Englisher types. I can get over your love affair with this mysterious “brown sauce.” Or your inability to comprehend the concept of “toaster oven.” Hell, I could even forgive your naughty giggles whenever I accidentally refer to my trousers as “pants.” But I have to put my foot down somewhere and insist that Miranda Hart looks like ½ of a goddamn equestrian team.

And this isn’t me being mean and laughing at this veritable Quasimodo of the dental world while claiming to be some sort of a beauty queen—I’m well aware of my own aesthetic shortcomings! I’ll happily admit, among other things, that I need to get my fat ass in shape and that when I look at myself in the mirror from certain angles I’m pretty sure I have Down Syndrome. I don’t deny these things. So why would I do Miranda Hart the disservice of saying that her teeth are not freakishly horse-like?

I have to talk about it. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume that everyone in England is just too kind to comment on it, but since I’m a total bitch I’ll go right ahead and say it: there are some seriously fugly sets of teeth I’ve seen here. Like, I’ve seen teeth here that have made me question the existence of God.

There’s one woman here in particular whose teeth do actually frighten me. Before I continue, let me just say that she’s certainly not someone who will be reading this blog, and she is certainly not someone I have EVER pretended to be friendly with—I mean, I may be a bitch but I’m not two-faced. I want to be vague, but not too vague. Let’s just say that she’s not the Queen. So that narrows it down.

Anyway, whenever this woman opens her mouth to speak I cringe a little, while at the same time imagining driving a large tractor through the gap between her two front teeth. Sometimes when I’m feeling less frightened I imagine tossing boba through the gap.

The worst thing is that I’m pretty convinced I’m the only person distracted by this woman’s proscenium arch-like mouth. So now in addition to the fear I feel every single time she opens her mouth, where I silently panic that the gap is just going to keep expanding until it consumes us all, I’m frightened that I’m going to fail at life. Come to think of it, I may have already.

Nuns and Ex-Shetland Ponies

So I’m walking down the road by myself, reflecting on a full day of classes. A full day of being asked about my accent, explaining that, no, I actually prefer the weather here, and having to explain that we don’t do RE in the US (Me: “It’s illegal in state schools.” Englisher Type: “[*doing a spit-take with a mouthful of Hob Nobs and tea*] WOT? Ah you sehrious???”) My mind’s swimming with all this new information I have to deal with, all these new people to socialize with, and all these new cultural norms I have to wrap my mind around.

And suddenly I see a nun. I’m half blind and she’s about a football field away, but man do I have nun radar. Well, radar suggests it’s an intentional and deliberate thing, whereas the truth of the matter (as I explained in the previous post) is that I get distracted by celibate clergy in the same way that small children get distracted by shiny objects. She’s about to enter the Pitt Rivers Museum, so I take off running, cutting across the sacred English grass like a rocket. Well, I say rocket but I’m such a fat ass that I took off more like a wonky-legged ox with a weight problem. But even wonky-legged oxen make it to Oregon eventually, and before long I had caught up with the nun inside this famous museum.

Look, I promise that not every post on this blog is going to be about how nuns, monks and priests don’t have sex. But I’m not gonna lie and tell you that it’s not going to come up often. So anyway, the reason I’m running after this nun is that I want to spy. I want to follow her around so that I can know what nuns do in their spare time. What does a person who doesn’t have sex do?

The answer: They stare at dead Shetland ponies.

I’m not sure how, nor am I sure of the more important Why, but there is a dead, stuffed Shetland pony right in the entry hall of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Apparently it’s been dead for longer than I’ve been alive, and it just sort of lumpily stands there with an empty look in its glass eyes for all eternity. I can’t stop imagining that the soul of this poor dead creature is looking down from Shetland Pony Heaven, indignantly reflecting on the fact that Shetland ponies don’t stuff dead humans and put them in museums for comically small horses to stare at.

But you know, I’m not here to talk about the ethics of taxidermy. I’m here to talk about nuns. So this nun that I’ve chased after is just standing there in silent reverence of this creature that is the animal kingdom’s version of a fun size pack of M&M’s. There was a sign in front of this pickled animal that encouraged the museum visitors to “PLEASE TOUCH!” And I’d like to hope that, among the various other things nuns silently contemplate at all times, the nun was silently contemplating whether or not to give this dead pony a good stroke.

Do it, Sister. And I mean that in the sense of the larger sisterhood of all women, not the sisterhood of nuns. Or traveling pants for that matter.

Obviously I had to leave at some point. The nun seemed to be giving this particular dead animal some seriously long consideration, and I couldn’t just sneak around all afternoon, hiding behind dead cheetahs and ducking behind deceased penguins just to see if this nun eventually touched the Shetland pony. But I’d like to think she did.

Flying Catholic Priests and "The List"

I think I might possibly be the most immature person in all of England. Well, not that that’s really saying all that much. I mean, take a look at this place, high school kids here dress more professionally than I do, and I think my 15 days in England so far have been the only 15 days of my life in which I haven’t heard the phrase, “That’s what she said!” …followed by an exchange of high fives. (And, on that note, I’ve had only a few high fives these past two weeks—and I’m pretty sure the few I’ve had were just done to humo(u)r the silly American.)

There was a moment today where I thought all this had changed, where I thought that finally the legendary English refinement had rubbed off on me and I was actually a proper adult now, no longer a small child in a 23-year-old’s body, constantly on the look-out for opportunities to tell a good fart joke. Or even a bad fart joke. I ain’t picky.

I’m talking, obviously, about the fact that today I met a Catholic priest and I was not tempted—-not even for a second—-to scream out, “YOU’RE NOT HAVING SEX!” And if you know me you know what a big deal this is. As someone who studies religion and who has met celibate members of a couple different religions, it’s something I used to always struggle with. I mean, the words have never actually escaped my lips (though I have planned a follow-up recovery sentence should I ever scream the first one: “Oops, sorry, I mean, it’s just—NOT EVER! NEVER EVER!”), but the fear of accidentally letting it slip one day used to always color my interactions with these people.

And please don’t think I’m picking on Catholics or Buddhists or Shakers or whoever—being a future RE teacher I am proud to announce that I have strange urges around people of ALL creeds. For example, whenever I’m in certain parts of Jerusalem (*COUGHMEAHSHEARIM*) it takes every ounce of my limited self-control NOT to run around naked and eat bacon.

Anyway, not having to fight the urge to loudly point out to this priest (in case he wasn’t aware) that he wasn’t having sex, I saw this as a sort of graduation into adulthood. “Finally,” I thought to myself, “I am a goddess of serenity. I am not thinking about this man’s lack of a sex life. Therefore I am the mature equal of my English cousins.”

But then I realized that, while sitting in a chair in front of an altar, this priest’s legs did not reach the ground. They just sort of hung there, occasionally kicking about, like a small kid chilling out on a swing. No, it actually made him look like a fairy or pixie, or something. And once I realized this there was basically no point in him continuing his lecture on John Henry Newman, because how are you supposed to concentrate on JHN’s Oxford links when there is essentially a wood sprite sitting in front of you? I’m doing a terrible job of explaining this, and maybe even there isn’t a good way to explain it at all, but the fact that this guy’s feet weren’t touching the ground and were instead swinging around basically made me think that at any moment he was going to sprout wings and take flight, fluttering all over the Oratory like that terrifying Israeli cartoon from the 70’s I once saw—it wasn’t about priests flying around churches, but it was about creepy cartoon butterflies…so…it’s sort of the same thing. Thankfully I didn’t break down into the giggles that threatened to form, but I sat there with a glazed happy expression on my face, like I was high on incense or something.

Later on in the day, after I’d had time to shake off images of this priest zooming around the church on his fairy wings (and not having sex), we went off to another church. It was an old, gorgeous college chapel, you know, dead people in the floor and everything. All was going smoothly as, thankfully, this time the priest leading us around was Anglican, whose sex life was therefore wholly uninteresting to me. But unfortunately he commented on the “stillness” of the chapel. We all paused to take in the silence and the stillness…

…which, of course, made me think of The List.

If you’ve read this far you’re surely curious/masochistic enough to want to know what The List is. So I’ll tell you. Rewind a bit: I like to go church surfing. I like to go to different churches and see what they’re all about. Sure, I like to pay attention to the liturgy, and the music, and the sermon, and the architecture, and the congregation…but I also like to make a note of where this church ranks on my “The List of the Least Fart-Friendly Congregation.” It’s hard to explain why I do this, and to be honest I’m not really sure why I do. It’s not like I’m really planning on launching some kind of bio-terrorist attack in church, it’s more like the same sort of thing that inspires people to climb mountains. Just because.

To fill you in, The List of the Least Fart-Friendly Congregations is topped by the Evanston Society of Friends and is bottomed out by whichever charismatic church has the best sound system. So there I am in this historic college chapel, lead by a fantastic tour guide, and all I can think about is, “On a scale of one to horrific, how bad would it be if one were to fart here?” And I started smiling and giggling to myself when I concluded that this chapel was almost as discriminatory against farts as the Quakers.

And this is normal for me. I have a feeling that if I had mentioned this particular aspect of my church surfing adventures on my grad school application, expensive overseas tuition fees or not, nothing would have tempted those poor bastards into accepting me. (Whenever I make eye contact with my RE tutor the phrase “NO TAKE BACKSIES!” comes to mind.) And I just don’t get it. I don’t get how I could be so immature and giggly. I am a dedicated student, a chair in the library here is already intimately acquainted with my ass, and I genuinely want to know more. But then everything is just so fucking hilarious.

Part of me wants to ask God/Shiva/Richard Dawkins just what the hell is wrong with me. But then an even larger part of me is so thrilled that I wrongfully find everything to be so delightful that, well, I just don’t want to be right.